Ahsan Husain

It is a privilege to work at Emory and learn about and report on so much quality biomedical research. I started to make a top 10 for 2014 and had too many favorites. After divertingÂ some of these topics into the 2015 crystal ball,Â I corralledÂ them into themes.

The entire heart muscle in young children may hold untapped potential for regeneration, new research suggests.

For decades, scientists believed that after a child’s first few days of life, cardiac muscle cells did not divide. Instead, the assumption was that the heart could only grow by having the muscle cells become larger.

CracksÂ were alreadyÂ appearingÂ in that theory. But new findings in mice, published May 8 inÂ Cell, provide a dramatic counterexample — with implications for the treatment of congenital heart disorders in humans. Read more